


. . . .

by Random_ag



Category: Bendy and the Ink Machine
Genre: Ouja Board, Talking To Dead People, Talking to Spirits, it's a secret tool that will help us later! :)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-12
Updated: 2020-01-12
Packaged: 2021-02-27 12:47:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22227358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Random_ag/pseuds/Random_ag
Summary: “You got experience with spirits?”“I tried to talk to demons when I was younger.”In which an old man tries to get in contact with someone despite never having used an ouja board before.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 13





	. . . .

Joey stared at the board on the floor with the most bored of expressions one could have mustered. He nudged at the triangular piece of wood in front of him with a finger while his other hand cupped his cheek, elbow leaning on his good leg’s knee as he sat on the pavement.

He sighed deeply.

“If there’s any spirits here tonight, could you give me a sign?”

Nothing changed.

He blinked slowly, horrifyingly slowly, terrifyingly tired.

The planchette began trembling. He stared as it moved from one letter to another to form an ominous H E R E.

“Thank you.” he said, unfazed.

The cursor trembled again for a second, almost confused.

“Are you ….?”

He looked as the piece of wood shifted towards the top of the board.

NO

He wasn’t surprised. He’d known from the very second the object had shown any kind of hesitation.

“Do you know someone named ….?”

The cursor twirled on itself.

NO

He sighed again.

“Thank you anyways.”

The bandaid on his right middle finger was already worn. It made a sharp swooshy sound as he quickly rubbed it against his thumb, almost as if it was a snap in reverse.

“Are any more spirits with you over there?”

YES

“Are any of them named …. ?”

There was a quick wait; NO.

“Do any of them know someone named …. ? Not necessarily in life.”

Another moment of stalling.

NO

He let his head fall towards the ground and hummed, first low, then louder, until he exhaled with a loud sigh full of nothing but terrible, terrible disappointment. He held his head in his hands, biting his lower lip; his face was scrunched in an angered yet hopeless visage. Eventually, he found the strength to hold his head up again as he rubbed at his eyes.

“Ok. Thank you again.”

He tapped on the ouja board lazily with one of his fingers, cheek squashed in the other palm. His attention was brought back from his aimless spacing out when the piece of wood moved without having been even barely prompted.

W H Y

“Why what?”

. . . .

Joey inhaled deeply.

“It’s just some business between the two of us. Don’t worry.”

Hah! As if some random ghosts were to be worried for him. He laid on his back against the floorboards with a long groan, hands folded on his stomach, staring at the dark dark ceiling.

Above Joey’s head but invisible to him, spectral shapes and goulish characters wore matching puzzled grimaces.

He remained still for a minute or so before forcing himself upright again, arms stiffling pulling him into a sitting position: “Can I turn on the lamp?” he asked somberly, pointing to a small abat-jour nearby.

NO

“Why not?”

A M B I E N C E

“Yeah, ok, atmosphere is nice and all but I can barely see what you’re saying.”

C A N D L E S

“Don’t have ‘em. The scents are too strong for me.”

C A N D L E S C E N T

“Scented candles.” he corrected. “There’s all kinds of those. Fruit, flowers, food, coffee, anything you like the smell of, there’s a scented candle for it, probably.”

A M A Z I N G

A sudden curiosity sparked in the sad man for a second: “Are you the same one from before or another one?”

A N O T H E R

“Were you a human?”

YES

“Huh. Must have been a long time since you were alive. Anyways, can I turn on the lamp?”

The planchette twirled, ending up again on a positive answer. There was a click, and a soft orange light irradiated the room. It might have not been the magical flickering shine of a candle’s flame, but Joey still found it complementing the atmosphere nicely.

“Much better.” he muttered, slightly satisfied, observing as the wooden triangle began moving again.

Y O U R N A M E

“Not telling you.” he replied immediately, “A friend of mine once told me you should never give your name to the fae or they’ll have power over you.”

The cursor darted across the board in an almost comically indignant way.

N O T F A E

“Who says?”

W E

“Your word against mine, folks.” (there was a tint of his old showman facade in those words) “How can I trust you, anyways? If you say you won’t screw me over if I give you my name it’s gonna sound like a big ol’ lie to me and I won’t say a single thing either way.”

The spirits above his head twisted around him, some unnerved, some amused, some cackling or nodding or snickering.

S M A R T H U H

“Actually I’m very stupid, but thanks.” he chuckled.

G O B A C K

Joey rose his eyebrow: “Back?”

....

He pursed his lips, not making a sound. His ghoulish guests waited; one of them got tired first, and moved the cursor.

W H A T H A P P E N E D

“Our business.” he replied coldly. “I already told you.”

W A N T T O K N O W

“Our. Business.”

The wooden object shook fiercely, but didn’t gain any reaction from the man, no matter how furious its movements became. Soon enough it stilled suddenly - as if taken by another pair of hands, ones much calmer than those that had been insisting and fussing - and gently began to slide across the board.

W H A T T O T E L L T H E M

In case we meet them, the specter meant. But with how slow moving could be, they had reasoned this would have been enough.

Joey bit the inside of his cheek. His teeth trailed harmlessly down until they were nibbling at the corner of his lower lip. Sucking what little air could have been in the small space in his mouth, he slipped the rest through the grip of his canines until they reached the opposite end of the lip, and he clicked his tongue softly.

“Just… Just sorry.”

The cursor moved understandingly.

W I L L D O

“Thank you.”

He looked at the board for a minute or so, in silence.

“So, hm.” he started, mouth twisting back and forth, “I borrowed this from someone and I have no idea how to, uh… Make it stop. As in… I’d like for this thing not to be, you know, haunted when I give it back. Any idea what I’m supposed to do?”

A creature of bone-chilling visage howled in laughter, rolling along the floor while clutching its wide open stomach. A slender figure pinched the bridge of their nonexisting nose in disbelief. The old ghost took the planchette for themselves and began answering.

P A S S T H I S O V E R F A R E W E L L

Joey furrowed his eyebrows. Would he have had to spell f-a-r-e-w-e-l-l? That sounded impractical. Hetook a better look at the ouja board. One would think he’d have noticed earlier the ‘goodbye’ written in giant letters at the bottom of it. He had not.

“So I move the thing over here?” he asked as ran his finger across the word. “And then you go and I don’t have to worry about accidentally cursing someone because I messed it up?”

YES

“Ok. Thank you.”

I T S N O T H I N G

He passed the planchette over ‘goodbye’, mouthing the farewell. Above him various spirits and apparitions left, some dematerializing, some riding away, others seeping through the ceiling as if gravity had been reversed; he, none the wiser of their departing, wondered if spending an evening like this had been worth it, or if all of it had been only an utter waste of time. He sighed and rolled his head with a crack of his neck bones. He forced himself to stand - careful not to make any sound, as it was nearly 11 p.m. - and dragged his body to bed.

It’s annoying.

He opened his eyes.

A train passed without stopping.

Rectangles of light glowed intermittently on his face for a few seconds before fading back into black.

A sound, like that of an underground caterpillar trying its best to run as fast as it can while bumping his body rhythmically against the ground by accident.

A metro station.

How did he get in a metro station?

He was in bed.

A dark metro station.

With nobody around.

Except.

Oh.

Well.

Joey didn’t say a thing for about three trains.

“Why are we in a metro station?”

The person next to him shrugged.

Your idea.

He looked on into the darkness. His mouth opened, but before anything could come out of it, even a breath -

It’s annoying.

“What?”

Sorry. Over and over. It’s annoying. Things happened. Can’t change.

Another two trains.

He turned his face towards the person.

Wide, white rectangles crossed their face, momentarily stripping it away from the dark into which it melts and drowning the dots that cover it, trying to give it a profile only to fail when it absorbed itself into the light.

Their eyes were unaffected, bright but dun. He could only see one.

“I write about you. A lot.”

I know.

“Isn’t that keeping you alive? In a sense? You live on in the pages, the words, the ink. You’re still alive.”

The person turned to him silently. Another train passed; the regular white intermittent spots only took away half of their face, still not highlighting any recognizable feature.

Their eyes were wide, and lightless in their glow.

I am not. Only a memory is living.

Their gaze went back to the tracks, but Joey’s remained on their face.

On the uncertain, confusing halo sorrounding their head.

On their teeth, that poked out when they spoke.

On their eyes.

Apologizing for being annoying would probably be an even worse decision.

“Can I… Ask you a question? Last one. Promised.”

A hum.

“Was there something you wanted to learn to do, but didn’t manage to?”

A bit of waiting.

A smile.

Read.

Joey smiled back.

“Well, I’m no teacher, but if you want I can try to teach you.”

A sound.

A guttural sound.

Louder than the thump-thump-thump of the trains.

A friendly cackle with sharp white canines peeking from darkened lips.

I don’t think we can do that now.

Joey turned to the trains as well, still smiling.

“That’s a shame.”

He returned the ouja board to the kind interesting black-clad youth of the floor above in the morning.

“Was there anybody?” he was asked.

He nodded: “A ghost who didn’t know about scented candles and some others.”

“Nice. What was their name?”

“I didn’t ask. Sorry.”

“Oh well. I’ll get some scented candles for them. Maybe they’ll come over.”

“They sounded nice.”

“Yeah, ghosts are nice, usually. Some spirits want your soul, though.”

“Is it like the fae? That you shouldn’t tell them their name?”

“Uh… I don’t know about the fae, but yeah, giving your name is a big no-no.”

“Called it.”

The youth looked at him funny: “You got experience with spirits?”

“I tried to talk to demons when I was younger.”

“No, I mean, like, recently. Like, before yesterday. I get a lot of weird vibrations from your apartment pretty often, like there’s a spirit going around.”

“… My nephew says there’s a ghost.”

“Hm. No, it’s not a ghost. It’s some other thing. Like a daemon or something.”

“Not a bad one, though.”

“No, not a bad one.”

He thanked them and went back home slowly, descending the stairs with small steps. Despite the prothesis hurting, he felt like he was in a good mood.


End file.
